1. Action name

Survey Spring 2011

1.1. What

I have created the survery for our 2011 Spring Sustainability class. I gathered everyone's survey questions that they posted on their continued and new actions and emailed them to Xavi where he put them all together in a survey format. After that, I edited all of the questions and deleted some that did not make much sense. I have been monitoring the surveys results since it was created.

1.2. Why this action makes things more sustainable?

My action of the survey is improving the Sustainability of IES Abroad Barcelona because it is providing feedback and information to everyone in our class so they can make their actions as effective as possible. When people review the results of the survey it will help them decide what they should do with their action. With out the feedback from the survey it would be difficult to know what will work best for the people they are trying to persuade to be more sustainable. Therefore, with out the survey there would be little guidance as how to move forward with the new actions and they would not be as effective. The long term effect of the survey is that it initiates thinking about how one can move forward with their action to help people in IES become more sustainable which will reduce our carbon footprint in the longrun. In a way, the survey is extremely eco-efficient because it does not create any waste at all because it is online (no paper was wasted in the making of this survey).

1.2.1. SWOT Analysis

Strengths

-allows for people in our class to improve their actions with the results of the survey, eco-efficient (no waste), it is easy to fill out, it takes under five minutes to fill out (time efficient)

Weaknesses

-people in IES may not be aware of the survey, there is no incentive to take the survey so people could not be providing helpful responses, one can access the survey results in real time, the survey can be easily copied and modified in the future (allows for better surveys in the future)

Opportunities

-allows for the students in the Sustainability course to take into consideration the results of the survey in order to improve their new actions, sparks the survey taker's thinking about being sustainable in Barcelona which can catalyze new eco-friendly opportunities for them

Threats

-the survey could be too long and people could lose interest in it, people could choose to ignore our request to take this survey

1.2.2. Feedback loops

The survey can provide a potential balancing loop. If more people take the survey (+) then there will be more information for the students of this class about how to make their actions effective (+) which leads to better actions (+) which leads to the increase of sustainable practices of students (+) which leads to less waste (-) which leads to less of a need for a survey in the first place to increase sustainable practices (+).
The loop is reinforcing because there is an even number of negative nodes in the loop.

1.2.3. Potential Benefits

The survey will benefit the quality of everyones actions because they will take into account the feedback on how to improve their actions. Therefore, these actions will be more effective and thus, improve the carbon footprint of those that participate in these sustainable actions for the longrun.

1.2.4. Potential Costs

A potential cost is time. We could spend alot of our time working on this survey to find out that it was not effective at all.

1.3. How

Although a survey was created last semester I did not use her survey template because she never emailed Xavi and I back about what site she used to make the survey. Xavi created the survey but I edited the questions in the survey through this website: http://sustainability.seeds4c.org/tracker13. I pressed edit tracker fields to edit the questions and on monday the 21st of March I closed the survey through this website as well. Here is a step by step of how I created the survey: 1) gathered all of the students surbey questions (20minutes). 2) Sent them to Xavi (1 minute) 3) edited the survey (30minutes) 4) posted to the forum wall for everyone to take the survey (1minute) 5)monitored the survey and looked at the progress (15min) 5) posted to the forum wall that it would be closing on March 21 (1minute) 6) Closed the survey (5minutes). Here is the website to take the survey: http://sustainability.seeds4c.org/Survey

1.3.1. "Cradle to Cradle" design

Because there was no waste produced in this survey, it is a crade to cradle design. The only energy that is being used is electron energy. It is completely virtual! Although, it does create information about our actions and this information is used by the students to better their actions which in turn is improving the ecological footprint of IES students who choose to participate in it.

1.3.2. Questions for the unified survey

Has this survey inspired you to be more sustainable while in Barcelona (like recycling, or using re-useable water bottles)?

1.3.3. Analysis of the results in the survey

10% did not answer, 40%answered no, but 50% answered yes that this survey has inspired them to be more sustainable while in Barcelona. Therefore, this survey was somewhat successful in catalyzing students thoughts about how to reduce their carbon footprint while in Barcelona.

1.3.4. Incentives

Since the survey is closed, I am not planning on offering any incentives. But maybe next year an incentive could be that those who take the survey recieve eco euros for their participation in the survey. I propose five eco euros per student who participates in order to raise their incentives to take part in the survey.

1.3.5. Relationship with the "Sustainability Club" (SC)

Maybe the students from the sustainability club could use the information from this survey in order to gather information about activities that people would be interested in participating in for the future.

1.3.6. How will this action be sustained when you are not here?

Since this survey is online, someone can access it next semester in order to see how we created the survey qnd build off of this survey.

1.3.7. Document format

I did not produce any documents in creating this survey.

1.3.8. Copyright license of your report

For my report I choose to use the copy right license cc-by-sa because I built upon this survey from previous semesters, and this is the license that the students chose. With this license, other can tweak and build upon my work as they wish as long as I recieve credit for it. It is compared to "copyleft" FLOSS licences.

Assignment 4: Peer review form

I think you did a great job with the survey. It was very helpful when I decided how to design my action based on students feedback.

98

Brian McNevin

Thanks for making the survey!

86

carlaf

The survey was extremely useful for everyone in order to improve the sustainability in IES. Surveys are a legitimate and accurate way of gathering information and in terms of improving our community, I couldn't think of a better method.

98

CFahey

This was a great survey and helped me and Im assuming most of the other students further develop their actions to better suit the IES students.

92

gnardi

This is really useful and helpful for everyone in the class. I agree with bernstein that it would have been good if there was more awareness so that more people would have participated, but it is still a really good idea and smart/efficient to have the survey online.

99

jschaye

This was really great of you to do, it really helped. Maybe next year they could go from class to class and have students participate during their Spanish classes so everyone has a voice instead of the lone 20 that actually participated.

98

Julia Nutt

GREAT JOB! It was very useful and you did a great job of getting it completed in enough time for us to all have feedback! I definitely think that for future reference that it should be mandatory to take in classes so that students have no choice but to take it because a lot of times when I am emailed surveys I do not take them.

95

Kmacdonald4

Good job with the survey and thank you for doing it. Maybe to get more participating in future years there could be an email announcing the survey and then a reminder email in case students forgot to take it

95

m.bernstein

doing the survey online saved a lot of paper. next time i think awareness of students needs to be raised for better participation but it helped us all out that those few participated. thanks for putting it together.

92

MarthaMay

Great work! In order to re-design the survey I think students should be required to fill out the survey in their Spanish classes. Everyone has Spanish three days a week and I think Spanish class can afford to take 10 minutes to have students fill out the survey.

84

obiajulu

This is easy to do and is very informative to the effectiveness of our activities.

100

Sarah Cole

Great survey! I agree with Martha that it should be given to students in their Spanish classes to take, otherwise a sufficient amount of people will not take the survey.

91

seantubridy

The survey was very useful for one of my actions, I just wish more people had filled it out.

96

SolomonBP

Thanks for doing the survey. It was particularly helpful for the Sustainability Club in helping determine what goals and projects had the most student support and were therefore worth pursuing. Appreciate the help.

95

steph.eastlake

The survey was very helpful for all of the students to put together sustainable projects that people can use. This was a very sustainable project.

1.19 Survey Spring 2011 (Vanessa Sienkievitz)
Good
That you agreed to continue this "featured action", that no one else was initially doing.
1.2.2. The potential feedback loop involved.
1.3. Detailed Report of the time consumed to manage this action (from your side).
Improvable
1.2.1. SWOT:
S: results from the survey can be read/accessed in real time.
S: we (students and professor) keep control on the survey, and it will be easily copied and modified in the future, since it's hosted in the same web site where we host our website for the course, in the same hosting of all the other websites from IES Abroad Barcelona.
T: other students might be creating their own surveys, aside of the unified survey (2 cases this semester, it seems, as far as the continued actions are involved)
T: learn from what happened between last semester and this one (regarding getting access to the survey engine and questions), and add any related threat, in order to warn new students in case they decide to do something which may lead to the same issue we had.
1.2.2. The feedback loop you identified is balancing, not reinforcing. You miss-identified the last causal link as negative when it's positive: "which leads to less waste (-) which leads to less of a need for a survey in the first place to increase sustainable practices (-)." There is not change in the effect between the last two actions, so the sign in the arrow would be positive (same effect). Re-read the notes from session 2.
1.3. You could add also the link to the page with the results from the survey, so that future students can read the results of first hand (page "Survey Results")
1.3.1.
"Technically, the survey is not a "Crade to Cradle" desgn because it does not produce any waste whatsoever.". Wrong deduction. In fact, if no waste is produced, then the action is cradle to cradle ready (only energy from electron is wasted). You could also argue about the source of electricity from the server where the website is hosted. There are some servers which ensure that their electricity comes from renewable resources... you could investigate this aspect, for instance...
"...which in turn is improving the carbon footprint of IES students who choose to participate in it." Why carbon footprint, and not ecological footprint, which takes into account all the things which have some impact on the Earth?
1.3.3. See 2011a General comments about this section.
1.3.4. Incentives. How many bonus points for students participating next semester? Do you accept to use ecoeuros as bonus points? If so, include them, and suggest how many points for that participation. See the current list of ecoeuros here: http://club.iesbarcelona.org/Ecoeuros
"I will talk to the members of the sustainability and ask them if they would like to use this survey in the future." This is difficult as such, because those students will not be here next semester. So I suggest that you suggest you discuss how future students could use the survey, and what for. Maybe the survey as it is, might not be interesting, but the knowledge on how to edit it to make it a new version adapted to their future requirements.
1.3.7. "I did not produce any documents in creating this survey. " Well, the survey itself is a document in html format. As well as your report.
1.3.8. If you add the "No derivatives" are allowed, then you are not applying the "waste = food" principle, and the survey created with the questions from all students would not be editable by others. And in fact, the survey (and the page producing the survey results) was technically created upon an older survey in the same website, which was produced with the license cc-by-sa, so that in fact, you are only allowed by previous students (who did the first version of the engine that I used to create this survey in 2011 Spring) to use the license cc-by-sa.
1.4. Time-sheet. Redo indicating in which session from the course syllabus the survey should be created, when opened for the public, when closed for the public so that the results could be analyzed.
1.5. References: What about citing and referring to the similar actions implemented in previous semesters? And also the reference to the page where the results in real time could be seen (and can be seen nowadays also).
1.6. Add you name!
"I would like to create the survey for this semester. Survey Question: Has this survey inspired you to be more sustainable while in Barcelona (like recycling, or using re-useable water bottles)?" Remove the information waste that you left at the end of your text.

Ok, better with these improvements.
You could have made some screenshot of the survey, and / or the results.
Referring to the survey made from students in previous semesters? Reference to the document of their report?